To riff on Ezra Pound’s parody of the 13th century poem: Change is icumen in/Llhude sing Goddamn!
By Farnaz Fatemi, from Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and Its Diaspora, edited by Christopher Nelson. Alt text in the thread.
Interesting discussion earlier about the politics in my local poetry community. No different than any politics where the personal stakes are high because there’s no real money involved, but that doesn’t make it less disappointing, especially with so much good that could be done.
Mahtob, whom we had to give up, staring out onto the street below, while my great-aunt Gussie’s sculpture looks on. It took that cat a long while to warm up to me, but she eventually did, and I miss her.
First taste of this tonight. It’s smooth and delicious, warm and warming. A drink to comfort a writer in tears, not the taste of the tears themselves.
Central Park wildlife.
It’s an odd feeling wanting not to get involved in something you’re trying to leave behind, and yet feeling compelled to, at least a little bit, because of what you know that others may not.
What the Uvalde shooter did was monstrous. Calling him a monster, however, conveniently elides the fact that nothing he did is at odds with the manhood values we promulgate and celebrate in this country, including the garden-variety misogyny he allegedly expressed at work. And if you say that killing children (or innocent people) is not what manhood is about, or some such thing, all you’re doing really is arguing that his manhood was “misdirected.” You’re not questioning the values that connect manhood to guns and violence and misogyny.
I recently had the pleasure of appearing on Arts Calling, Jaime Alejandro’s (@cruzfolio) podcast. He’s a gracious and generous interviewer. We talked about writing, sexual violence, academia, literary translation, and more. It’d be lovely if you checked it out.
It was disappointing to read this piece about the great replacement conspiracy theory, What Oprah Winfrey Knows About American History That Tucker Carlson Doesn’t, and find no mention of the central role antisemitism plays in the theory’s current incarnation.
The view from Walkway Over the Hudson.
Maybe from the Planting Fields Arboretum in Oyster Bay:
I’d forgotten how literary Monty Python’s humor was.
I don’t remember where I took this:
A poem from my forthcoming manuscript with @PressFernwood was accepted today by a journal I’ve been in before. I’m very happy about this, of course, but it also means I have only three submission-appropriate poems left and one is 14 pages long! Time to get writing.
Where we live rewards volume.
A market in Iran, Isfahan I believe, from our trip in 2008:
When I am back in the classroom after my sabbatical, I am going to require the students in every class I teach to write a progress report. I want them to tell me which assignments are missing, their grade so far, plans to improve, self-evaluation, etc. The LMS has all the info.
I thought technology was supposed to make life easier. Submitting final grades the way I have to do it on my campus is way more complicated than it needs to be.
To be savored one drop at a time…
That sinking feeling you get when you find out a friend, someone whose art you respect, is an old fashioned, unapologetic misogynist who refuses to recognize his own misogyny.
A poem from my first book, The Silence of Men, that should never have become as relevant as the Supreme Court and the whole right wing infrastructure has now made it:
Holocaust Remembrance Day: it’s worth looking at every single image.
It made me angry and very sad to read this: The AAUP Explains Antisemitism and Gets It Wrong, by Cary Nelson and Steven Lubet.
I just learned that May is Jewish American Heritage Month, that it has been so designated since 2006. Especially given the rise in antisemitism, though this should not be a necessary catalyst, maybe it’s time to celebrate it more prominently.